ROPRECHT THE ROBBER.

The story here versified is told by Taylor the Water Poet, in his "Three Weeks, Three Days, and Three Hours' Observations from London to Hamburgh in Germany; amongst Jews and Gentiles, with Descriptions of Towns and Towers, Castles and Citadels, artificial Gallowses and natural Hangmen; and dedicated for the present to the absent Odcombian Knight Errant, Sir Thomas Coryat." It is in the volume of his collected works, p. 82. of the third paging. Collein, which is the scene of this story, is more probably Kollen on the Elbe, in Bohemia, or a town of the same name in Prussia, than Cologne, to which great city the reader will perceive I had good reasons for transferring it.

PART I.

ROPRECHT the Robber is taken at last,
In Cologne they have him fast;
Trial is over, and sentence past;

And hopes of escape were vain he knew,
For the gallows now must have its due.

But though pardon cannot here be bought,
It may for the other world, he thought;
And so to his comfort, with one consent
The Friars assured their penitent.

Money, they teach him, when rightly given,
Is put out to account with Heaven;
For suffrages therefore his plunder went,
Sinfully gotten, but piously spent.

All Saints, whose shrines are in that city,
They tell him, will on him have pity,
Seeing he hath liberally paid,

In this time of need, for their good aid.

In the Three Kings they bid him confide,
Who there in Cologne lie side by side;
And from the Eleven Thousand Virgins eke,
Intercession for him will they bespeak.

And also a sharer he shall be

In the merits of their community;

All which they promise, he need not fear,
Through Purgatory will carry him clear.

Though the furnace of Babylon could not compare
With the terrible fire that rages there,

Yet they their part will so zealously do
He shall only but frizzle as he flies through.

And they will help him to die well,

And he shall be hang'd with book and bell;
And moreover with holy water they
Will sprinkle him, ere they turn away.

For buried Roprecht must not be,
He is to be left on the triple tree;
That they who pass along may spy

Where the famous Robber is hanging on high.

Seen is that gibbet far and wide

From the Rhine and from the Dusseldorff side;
And from all roads which cross the sand,
North, south, and west, in that level land.

It will be a comfortable sight

To see him there by day and by night;
For Roprecht the Robber many a year
Had kept the country round in fear.

So the Friars assisted, by special grace,
With book and bell to the fatal place;
And he was hang'd on the triple tree,
With as much honour as man could be.

In his suit of irons he was hung,

They sprinkled him then, and their psalm they sung;

And turning away when this duty was paid,
They said what a goodly end he had made.

The crowd broke up and went their way;
All were gone by the close of day;
And Roprecht the Robber was left there
Hanging alone in the moonlight air.

The last who look'd back for a parting sight,
Beheld him there in the clear moonlight;

But the first who look'd when the morning shone,
Saw in dismay that Roprecht was gone.

ROPRECHT THE ROBBER.

PART II.

THE stir in Cologne is greater to-day

Than all the bustle of yesterday;

Hundreds and thousands went out to see;
The irons and chains, as well as he,
Were gone, but the rope was left on the tree.

A wonderful thing! for every one said
He had hung till he was dead, dead, dead;
And on the gallows was seen, from noon
Till ten o'clock, in the light of the moon.

Moreover the Hangman was ready to swear
He had done his part with all due care;
And that certainly better hang'd than he
No one ever was, or ever could be.

Neither kith nor kin, to bear him away
And funeral rites in secret pay,
Had he; and none that pains would take,
With risk of the law, for a stranger's sake.